It’s pretty safe to say that most people don’t like pain. Pain is uncomfortable. It takes us away from our happy place and forces us to deal with stuff we don’t enjoy. Pain is inconvenient, costly, and distracting. Remember that meme, “Ain’t nobody got time for dat!” Yeah, that’s how we feel about pain.

On the other hand, there’s a small segment of the population that welcomes pain. I’m serious. Just look at all those ultra-marathoners and extreme sports enthusiasts. They know pain intimately. It motivates them, pushes them past their limits. Most of us will never understand that drive, and instead will do our best to stay in the pain-free zone.

Kimberly Clay is the founder and creative force behind What She Say. She’s a business professional, writer and editor who’s been creating and managing digital content for nearly twenty years. Her work is now focused in the areas of self-improvement and personal development, and she is passionate about helping other individuals, especially women, to find a path for living their best life.

If the only thing you can feel right now is “I’m sad,” you aren’t alone. So many of us feel deeply sad at various points in our lives. The sense of overwhelming loss or grief is something that most of us will not escape during our life’s journey. The problem is that we’ve become particularly self critical about these feelings, which can delay our healing process and create deeper wounds.

When that happens, it can become an even more overwhelming feedback loop that leads to even more tears. Just imagine if a friend came to us saying, “I’m sad,” and our response was to “just get over it, already!”. It may seem ridiculous, but this is the way we universally treat ourselves when we feel sad for long periods of time.

Kimberly Clay is the founder and creative force behind What She Say. She’s a business professional, writer and editor who’s been creating and managing digital content for nearly twenty years. Her work is now focused in the areas of self-improvement and personal development, and she is passionate about helping other individuals, especially women, to find a path for living their best life.

There are few things in this world that are more frustrating than figuring out how to stop listening to naysayers. Regardless of what change you are trying to make in your life or goal you are trying to reach, you will always have people trying to discourage you and getting in your head.

It's hard to know how to ignore the naysayers, and so we often end up being very affected by their opinions. If this is something you find yourself dealing with, here are four of our best tips on how to deal with naysayers and live your best life.

4 Ways to Stop Listening to Naysayers

1. Be Convicted in Your Goal

When we are unsure about our goals or beliefs, it’s very easy for others to knock them down. But when we are clear about what we want, committed to our goals, trust ourselves and confident in our abilities, the comments of naysayers go in one ear and out the other because we believe in who we are, and the vision we have for our lives.

So, the first step to learning how to ignore naysayers is to come from a place of authenticity, confidence and commitment to your goal.

2. Understand Others' Point of View

As frustrating as naysayers are, it’s important to note that they don’t always come from a place of malice. Before you get upset at their comments or stop listening to their point of view, you need to understand not only what they're saying, but where they're coming from – their perspective and their motives toward you. Are they telling you not to freelance because they don't have confidence in your skills and abilities, or are they afraid of losing their own jobs?

When listening to naysayers, it’s also important to ask yourself, are they experts? Do the people offering advice or opinions professionals in the subject matter? Do they have experience dealing with what you're contemplating doing?

If their advice isn’t coming from a place of experience and expertise, then consider it really is irrelevant. They don't know any more than you do about it. So what's to say your way of thinking and your perspective isn't right or won't be successful?

In many cases (not all, but many) what you'll learn is that most naysayers come from a place of fear and insecurity from their own lives and experience. They just don't know any better. And the best thing to do in those circumstances is to thank them for their input, because they're often really just trying to help you and keep you from harm, but don't take what they say seriously.

3. Don’t Overshare

If you want to stop listening to naysayers, don’t give them anything to talk about! Stop sharing your business with everyone.

Your goals and the overall vision you have for your life are valuable, precious and delicate things. Keep your goals to yourself, and share them only with those people whose thoughts and opinions you value and trust and whose intentions toward you are pure and sincere. And even then, you still have to be extremely careful to weigh their input against your own thoughts and ideas.

Give yourself the ability to quietly and confidently build a solid foundation for your life vision (or whatever you're attempting to do or accomplish), because a solid foundation is nearly impossible to knock down. But if you carelessly share your goals or intentions with anyone and everyone who has an opinion (and let's face it, we all do) without having created a strong foundation for what you see for yourself and your life, it’s easy for the comments of naysayers to cast doubt in you and to cause your plans to crumble.

4. Don’t Engage

One of the most difficult - but rewarding - ways to stop listening to naysayers is to simply refuse to engage. If you don’t engage in a conversation where someone is being negative or discrediting you, they don’t get the response that they want and eventually they'll just stop talking.

Whether you have had naysayers try to talk you out of a dietary change, pursuing a new career, or following your dreams, it’s time to stop listening to them. If you allow their opinions to be so substantial in your life, you will never be able to move forward and progress with confidence on your own.

Final Thoughts

Learning how to stop listening to naysayers is one of the most valuable skills you can possibly learn. While it may seem like a difficult task in the beginning, follow these four tips and you’ll realize that it’s much easier than you thought, and much better for your life!

If you have enjoyed this post, please take a moment to share it with your family and friends. Thanks!

Kimberly Clay is the founder and creative force behind What She Say. She’s a business professional, writer and editor who’s been creating and managing digital content for nearly twenty years. Her work is now focused in the areas of self-improvement and personal development, and she is passionate about helping other individuals, especially women, to find a path for living their best life.

Let’s be honest. No one of us has loved every single job that we’ve had. In fact, some of those jobs were so bad that we were dying to quit – but were unable to for one reason or another.

Maybe you find yourself in that situation right now. Women in every industry have wondered what to do when you hate your job and you can’t quit. If you’ve ever had this question – especially if it’s relevant to your life right now – then read on to learn:

Kimberly Clay is the founder and creative force behind What She Say. She’s a business professional, writer and editor who’s been creating and managing digital content for nearly twenty years. Her work is now focused in the areas of self-improvement and personal development, and she is passionate about helping other individuals, especially women, to find a path for living their best life.

Overthinking. We all do it. Thousands of years ago planning out the specifics of every possible scenario was what kept us alive. Now it only keeps us standing in the grocery aisle for two hours trying to choose between two different kinds of cookies.

Overthinking leads to a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety, but in addition to that, it's extremely counter-productive.

Below are just a few of the problems with overthinking:

The Problems With Overthinking

Time suck – Overthinking, contemplating various and even numerous possibilities, alternate situations and courses of action takes time, a lot of time during which you are not moving forward or making progress. That time would be much better spent focusing your thoughts and energies only on the most promising one or two possibilities and scenarios in order to solve the challenge with which you are faced.

Promotes indecision – When you're faced with a problem and you open yourself up to too many options, the result is that you have a more difficult time choosing an option to go with. When you overthink things, you tend to try to consider and then solve too many possibilities, and the result is more often than not, you solve none. You become paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the situation which now appears much more daunting.

Postpones action steps – If you're stuck and immobilized, you're not taking action. You're failing to make any decisions or move in any direction that may help you to solve your problem or escape your situation.

Encourages negativity – Overthinking invariably causes you to seek out as many possibilities as you can regarding what can go wrong. You don't overthink to consider what may go right. And considering all of those “gone wrong” scenarios encourages you to think that there is more of a likelihood for failure, doing the wrong thing or making the wrong decision than there is for success.

But you don't have to bog yourself down in the paralysis of analysis. Here are three tips to help you curb your overthinking.

How to Stop Overthinking

1. Plan a mental map of your problem – When you are first presented with a problem, try to take a deep breath and come up with a plan for tackling it. If possible, write a list of steps you can take to address this problem. Pretty soon you'll find that you are worrying less about what to do next.

2. Avoid situations that can cause you to overthink – Sometimes we are aware of exactly the type of situations that lead to overthinking. Think about the areas of your life that cause you to worry unnecessary and see if there are ways that you can avoid the situation entirely. Maybe you can even combine steps one and two to create an avoidance plan.

3. Distract yourself and stay active – Exercise can help you reduce overthinking by keeping you active. When you are exercising, you don't have the mental space to worry about anything but your next rep or step. Distracting yourself from your overthinking will help you forget what was making you stress out in the first place.

With these three simple steps you can begin to overcome the overthinking that keeps you up at night and keeps you stressed. It is possible to think clearly and rationally about your future without causing unnecessary stress over problems that may never even come to pass.

So as you plan for today, this week, this month or the rest of the year, remember these steps when you start to overthink a situation. Don't overthink it. Using these tips, you can go into your next problem happier and healthier.

Kimberly Clay is the founder and creative force behind What She Say. She’s a business professional, writer and editor who’s been creating and managing digital content for nearly twenty years. Her work is now focused in the areas of self-improvement and personal development, and she is passionate about helping other individuals, especially women, to find a path for living their best life.

One of the things that can get especially irritating at this time of year is the fact that EVERYONE and their brother seems to be talking about goal setting.

How to set personal goals. Why goal setting is important. How to set goals so that you can succeed. It's a dream until you write it down, then it's a goal. Five rules for goal setting. (Why are there rules for setting goals?) The 'secret' to setting goals. And the list continues. Ugh!

And every year when the topic of goal setting heats up, it's a reminder that you apparently SUCK at goals. You must, because there are sooo many things you want to accomplish that you haven't yet achieved.

You're seemingly forever STUCK in this vortex of un-achievement, under-achievement, or not-nearly-enough-of-what-you-want in life.

You can't seem to get to wherever you should be to be making significant strides in your life in directions that you truly want to go!!

So how in the world is making a bunch of goals going to change ANYTHING? Why should I? What's the point?

Now let me ask you...Does any of that sound vaguely familiar to you in the context of your life? Yes? I thought it would.

So the question becomes how will this coming year, how will 2019 be any different for you than any of the years past?

And, in all honesty, I can't say how it will be different for you. But, I can say how it is entirely, 100% possible that it absolutely CAN be different (better) for you. And here's how...

You have to change your mind. It's as simple, and as complicated as that. Really.

Now I know that there are some of you, probably many of you that would argue the point with me.

“I'm stuck in a dead-end job.”

“I'm too old.”

“I don't have enough money.”

“I don't have the right connections.”

“I don't have the resources I need.”

“Changing my mind isn't going to make any difference. Don't you see...I've got all this other stuff!”

Okay. I hear you, and believe me, I KNOW about “other stuff” in life. But I also know about what can happen when you change your mind.

And to be completely honest and transparent, I'm completely guilty of not doing it enough in my own life (changing my mind) to focus on what I want rather than my current set of circumstances. It's something I struggle with it all the time!

But I can also tell you that I currently live in a home that I saw in my mind before I ever came to live in it. And I live in it because I changed my mind.

Don't worry. I'm not going to get all Woo Woo here...I'm just going to say that the mind is a powerful thing. And setting yourself on a course mentally, then spiritually and then emotionally that you then physically commit to (because yes, you have to DO something for goals to work), you can begin to experience levels of success not only with goal setting, but in your life in general.

It CAN happen, and what's more important, it can happen for you.

This post is already going to be longer than I intended, so let me get this back on track in terms of setting personal goals and the importance of setting goals.

Setting Personal Goals

You will never get the life you want without setting personal goals. It just won't happen. It's not something you can “luck” into, it's not something that somehow “just happens”. In order to have the life you want, you have to define the life you want. You have to choose it. And choosing it means setting goals for what you want it to be.

How to Set Personal Goals

1. Begin with the end in mind. Without focusing on “what you don't have” (which brings a negative energy and a spirit of lack into your situation), direct your attention to identifying (exactly, specifically) what you wish to have in your life and for your life. Who do you want to be? Where do you want to be in life? How do you want to live daily? What type of environment do you want to have surrounding you? What do you want to be able to do and accomplish?

2. WRITE IT DOWN!!! It's not good enough to “have some idea” of what you think you want or want to achieve, or to carry thoughts on those subjects “in the back of your mind”. Bring them to the forefront. Write them down. Make them real.

3. Take stock of where you currently are in life (relative to where you want to be), who you are, what are the beliefs and values you hold dear, what is true for you, and what you have in terms of assets and resources.

4. Now that you have identified what your goals are and taken inventory of your circumstances and condition, Create a plan. How are you going to get from where you are to where you want to be? What does that journey and that road look like for you?There is a way. Trust me there is. In fact there may be a million ways, but you have to see it. You have to identify a path that will work for you. But you have to create a connection a way to see how to get from where you are to where you want to be. You have to make that connection in your mind, no matter how convoluted or circuitous the route may seem.

5. Finally, you have to act on your plan. That's the only way this works. You have to commit to what you envision. You have to do it.

Tips for Personal Goal Setting:

1. Be honest. Setting goals that don't align with who you are and what you want are going to be failed from the start. Formulate goals from a place of being truthful, genuine and authentic to who you are.

2. Include small as well as large goals. The smaller goals help you to get quick wins that will help to keep you motivated. Smaller goals also accumulate to help you achieve your larger goals, and they quickly change how you live and experience your life on a daily basis which no only encourages you, but makes you feel better, more accomplished and happier.

3. Be open to possibilities and opportunity. Don't allow your own limiting beliefs (or the limiting beliefs of others) to deprive you of experiences and accomplishments that are absolutely possible for you. Allow yourself to think BIG!

Importance of Setting Goals

Somehow at some point in adulthood, many of us get this idea in our heads that life is just gonna do what it's gonna do, and we're basically along for the ride like a bunch of bobbles in a river being carried along by the current over which we have no control - stopping and starting, landing and setting adrift again by the movement of the water and the obstacles which we encounter along the way.

And life can be determined a lot like that, if we let it.

But if there's something we want, or if there's a place we want to get to, a journey we want to have, a specific experience or collection of experiences we seek, it's up to us to make those happen.

Is it possible they could happen if we don't set goals or make plans? Sure. Anything's possible. But it's much less likely.

To ensure our best chance at the life we envision, we have to take ownership. We have to do what we can to influence the ways in which our lives go. Will there be circumstances that we didn't plan for or see coming that make their way into our lives? Of course! Life is made up of many of those.

However, if we want more of the experiences that we desire to have, if we want our lives to have more (or less) of specific elements, we have to formulate goals for how we can achieve that. We have to make a plan (or a series of plans) and then put those things in motion.

Then we can direct where we're going, have the means to track our progress from where we've been, and know when we arrive at the place we want to be.

I don't know about you, but I want the coming year to be radically different than this year (and I mean that in a good way). I do not want another year that is virtually indistinguishable from the year before it, and the year before that, and the year before that.

And I don't want a year that's completely overshadowed by the bad things, bad experiences, “lack of “ or things that weren't accomplished or made better because there were so few new things, good things and better things taking place.

So let's do this. Let's set some awesome personal goals this year! Be brave, be bold, think fresh, think new! You CAN do this. We can make our lives better, deeper and to have more of what we want. It's not too late. Go get your life!

Start your New Year right using the Self Journal for planning, goal setting and journaling in 2019! Click here to watch the video.

Kimberly Clay is the founder and creative force behind What She Say. She’s a business professional, writer and editor who’s been creating and managing digital content for nearly twenty years. Her work is now focused in the areas of self-improvement and personal development, and she is passionate about helping other individuals, especially women, to find a path for living their best life.

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